On Thursday evening, I took a brisk walk from work over the river and down to the Elephant & Castle for the first parliamentary selection meeting I’ve been to. The subject of the meeting was the re-adoption (or otherwise) of Simon Hughes MP as the prospective parliamentary candidate for the area.

Simon was on good form, speaking first and then answering questions. In the end, the vote was for reselection with no votes against – so despite it being a secret ballot, you can pretty much work out how I voted.

It was also the first party event I’ve been to in Southwark. Went along to the pub afterwards and had a pleasant evening with a group of local councillors and activists, who were all very friendly. Looking forward to Bermondsey and Old Southwark Liberal Drinks in a couple of weeks.

Lord Beaumont of Whitley is a peer for the Green Party. As you’d imagine, he’s using his presence in the House of Lords to do lots of important work. In particular, he’s introduced a bill to the House of Lords that is perhaps the epitome of central control. Ladies and gents, the Piped Music etc. (Hospitals) Bill.

Provide for the Secretary of State to draw up a plan to prohibit piped music and the showing of television programmes in the public areas of hospitals; and to require the wearing of headphones by persons listening to music in the public areas of hospitals.

Now, I’m not denying it could be a vote-winner, but surely the Secretary of State for Health of the United Kingdom might have better things to do, and hospitals are capable of making these sorts of arrangements themselves…?

theguardian reports a well-meaning but bizarre suggestion that we could roll back the invasion of privacy that comes with CCTV by turning CCTV cameras into webcams.

Footage from surveillance cameras must be made freely available to the public if Britain is to avoid becoming a Big Brother state, researchers warned yesterday.

Under the proposals, networks of CCTV cameras would be turned into public webcams, allowing those under surveillance to see where cameras are directed, what images are recorded and who is viewing the footage.

In principle, the wider sharing of information is a good liberal principle, but this proposals doesn’t allow us to “watch the watchers” as the co-author of the report claims, only to watch each other. While I can see the argument that…

Community members could object if they felt particular cameras were unnecessary or unnecessarily intrusive. This would limit the potential for voyeuristic or prejudicial misuse of surveillance

…I’m not at all convinced it would happen. Rather, we would be introducing a system that allowed everyone to spy on everyone else, as intrusive but less regulated than the current systems.

Guess who said:

The 10p rate is very important because it’s a signal about the importance we attach about getting people into work and it’s of most importance to the low paid.

So prizes, as it’s Budget day, for working out that it was the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, back in 1999 – when he introduced the 10p starting rate of tax, replacing the previous lower rate of 20p.

Today he announced that he would be replacing the 10p rate with a 20p rate. How far we have come…