I've not been keeping the blog up to date, but have entered several things on nTwitter, which must have a wider audience now that it has reached 300 followers. Just to catch up with Parliamentary activity, I spoke yesterday on David Alton's amendment to the Legal Aid etc Bill, dealing with the amounts that are to be deducted from damages awarded to victims of industrially related respiratory diseases. Mesothelioma, a painful cancer that kills patients on average within a year from diagnosis, accounts for the majority of these payments, and its unbelievable mean to take money from the terminally ill victims of this horrible disease. When they are told they will be fined in this way, many sufferers won't even bother to pursue their legitimate claims. See http://bit.ly/yE3g08

Today I voted against the Government on an amendment to the Welfare Reform Bill dealing with payments to single mothers of disabled children who aren't in work. As I've said before, we shouldn't be making the poor and vulnerable contribute to paying off the debts left to us by Messrs Blair and Brown. There's plenty of scope for getting more from the rich, such as the mansion tax on houses worth more than £2 million or Supertax on incomes above £250k. It is said that if we tax the rich heavily they will emigrate to Geneva or Hong Kong, but I don't believe the top jobs couldn't be done just as well by the next rung down, for less money. But the risks could be managed by raising the % gradually over say ten years, so that individuals and companies would have time to adjust to the idea.