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Thursday 11th DecemberBritain's leading conservative blog Today's top ConservativeHome features ToryDiary: What is the 2009 equivalent of Labour isn't working? ToryDiary: Tories prepare to 'protect' youngest single mothers from Labour "WE ARE NOT COURTIERS AND CRONIES" Local government: Richard Ashton says Political Advisors have a worthwhile role in winning the battle of ideas Three videos: Boris promises to sit in dark for an hour during March 2009's 'Earth Hour' Gordon Brown tells Commons that he opposes legalisation of assisted suicide Michael Ignatieff, new Liberal leader, urges Canada's Conservative government to copy Gordon Brown's stimulus plan Amy Selman on Platform: Is the rise of American-modelled libertarianism in the UK a consequence of an escalating EU? Thinking about assisted suicide Mark Field MP: "Those who desire laws on assisted dying are keen to make clear that any new legislation would contain appropriate safeguards. But there can never be a safeguard which prevents a vulnerable and confused person from feeling they have a duty to ask a doctor in private to end their life prematurely." Simon Chapman: "About 540,000 people die in the UK each year, and the care they receive is of patchy and variable quality. We need to focus on improving the quality of care for all. The government has taken a useful step in this direction with July's End of Life Care strategy. Conservatives also support this. In sixty years of a cradle-to-grave NHS, the cradle end of care has been a cross-party political priority for many years. We need to do the same for the other end of life." Today's other newslinks Today's must-read: "Pensioners' savings should not be taxed" "The Daily Telegraph today launches a campaign for the savings income of pensioners to be exempted from tax. We are not talking about a small number of well-heeled people here. Nearly nine million of the country's 11 million pensioners receive some form of income from savings and investments. For more than five million of them, it provides at least half their income. And the overwhelming majority are of modest means. According to the Government's own figures, eight million pensioners receive investment income worth an average of £51 a week. This is now being reduced dramatically..." Nein, nein, nein "Gordon Brown's multibillion pound economic rescue plan has been dismissed as ineffective and expensive by Germany's finance minister." - Telegraph | Independent "The assumption appears to be that fiscal stimulus will automatically revive private spending. But this belief contrasts with data that show there is considerable uncertainty about the size and nature of the stimulus required to cause spending to increase." - Leszek Balcerowicz and Andrzej Rzonca in the FT Borrow, spend and then plug the black hole with heavy taxation of petrol - Anatole Kaletsky in The Times Existing infrastructure projects are getting behind schedule - FT The Bank of England economist who attacked colleagues for not cutting interest rates has quit - Sky "It is still highly unlikely that Britain will go to the IMF, but the highly unlikely has been happening rather a lot recently." - Fraser Nelson in The Spectator Peter Riddell: Labour depend upon early signs of economic renewal "Mr Brown reckons that the public will respect a decisive government. But that depends on initiatives having a visible, positive impact next year." - Peter Riddell in The Times Another 'GOAT' leaves Brown's 'big tent' "Lord Lester, a Liberal Democrat and distinguished human rights lawyer, quit as the prime minister's adviser on constitutional reform a month ago. In a scathing attack yesterday, he revealed for the first time how he felt tethered by the government, describing its record on human rights as "dismal and deeply disappointing"." - Guardian Jacqui Smith to create local intelligence profiles on the activities of extremists - ePolitix The real reason of the Damian Green affair is that we need elected police chiefs "For the better part of a decade, we’ve campaigned to place the police under elected sheriffs. Some of our chief constables, we contended, had cast off the cables that once attached them to public opinion. They were concentrating on speed cameras and hate crimes and community relations when the rest of us wanted them to concentrate on being unpleasant to scoundrels. The best way to align the police’s priorities with everyone else’s, we argued, was to place our constabularies under locally elected representatives." - Douglas Carswell MP and Dan Hannan MEP in The Spectator 'Snogging Boris' "Even the most hard-core Left-wingers say Boris Johnson is the only Tory they’d ever consider snogging." - Daily Mail And finally... the Cameron family Christmas card "This year, David Cameron’s card features a photograph of his family taken after a birthday party. He has opted for black and white, lending extra authenticity, rather than the colour of the Blair tradition. The Tory leader gazes into the eyes of his son Ivan. His daughter Nancy is wearing her party dress, while the youngest, Arthur, appears to be in the grip of a major birthday-cake high. Samantha Cameron wears the rictus smile of a woman who would like the photographer to go so that she can have a drink." - Ben Macintryre in The Times Our main sites Homepage. ToryDiary. Seats and candidates. Local government. Parliament. Platform. CentreRight. International. PlayPolitical videos.

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