I actually do have some sympathy with Derek Draper’s argument that this was a private e-mail conversation, but the mistake Draper made was seeking to get down in the gutter and slug it out with the likes of Paul Staines.

The electorate respects conviction politicians, and the labour movement project to build a secure and just, better world is a principled and enduring platform that needs to be restored to the heart of left and centre-left politics.

Obscene, libellous smears are not the same as political tittle tattle.

But if he hadn't done it, someone else would have got there eventually. It's up to all of us now to stop this happening again. Some people tell me that blogging is the future of politics. If this is the case, I very much hope it gets more mature with its increasing importance.

We can all agree that censorship is not the route to go down. Therefore all political parties and all press and media outlets have a responsibility to regulate themselves

The next election will instead be a referendum on a worn-out Labour movement. If Conservatives win, it will be because the party has made itself less offensive to the electorate than those currently in charge.

He instructed the party to do "social action" projects (say, helping renovate youth centers), to show it cared about ordinary Britons.

Beyond this bold agreement with the status quo, the party has refused to articulate its own agenda, lest any part go down badly with voters.

In my experience, perhaps the top five guys in any corporation usually have that kind of protection. Here we seem to have an entire executive class that has the clause in their deals.

It challenges the new atheists, who see themselves involved in a war of reason against faith and who have an unwarranted faith in the power of pure reason and in the purity of their own reasoning.

hard for them to appreciate that most people struggle toward goodness, not as a means, but as an end in itself.

Paying fair market values for the assets will not work. Only by overpaying for the assets will the banks be adequately recapitalized. But overpaying for the assets simply shifts the losses to the government. In other words, the Geithner plan works only if and when the taxpayer loses big time. Some Americans are afraid that the government might temporarily “nationalize” the banks, but that option would be preferable to the Geithner plan. After all, the F.D.I.C. has taken control of failing banks before, and done it well.

"Do We Need All This Regulation? Government claims that this regulation is all necessary. They seem to believe that without it banks could steal our money...”And went on: “Mortgage Regulation: We see no need to continue to regulate the provision of mortgage finance, as it is the lending institutions rather than the client taking the risk”.

I have yet to see a convincing case made that the costs of dealing with climate change aren't principally the costs of protecting old industries.

While the term "hedge fund" now is applied to firms that don't actually go short or otherwise hedge their investments, I still feel it is a disservice to imply that that is the nature of corporate credit unions. They are allowed to invest only in AAA and AA rated securities.

your statement makes it sound as if they have been bailed out with government dollars, which is not true. The NCUA and CU system is taking care of this problem with their own funds,

As for the effect on CUs, large and small: Some CUs that are under-capitalized will also be placed into conservatorship by the NCUA. The most likely outcome of that action is for the CU to be merged into a larger one. And across the board, because of the fees that all CUs are being required to pay, CUs will have to do everything they can to save money.

The central short-term objective of NCUA’s Corporate Stabilization Program has been to increase liquidity in corporate credit unions. Since the NCUA Board first began taking stabilization actions, liquidity has demonstrated marked improvement. The reliance on external borrowing has declined from $11.8 billion to $2.1 billion. NCUA believes that the actions to conserve the two corporates, in tandem with established plans to enhance liquidity and generally stabilize the corporate network, represent the most cost effective and prudent alternative available to the credit union industry.