Oh Crap someone's gone and emboldend the government again!

In an unparalleled act of political calculation the UK decided to hold a parliamentary by-election last week in the shadow of the US presidential election and yes I forgot all about it too.

With an unsurprisingly low voter turn out the incumbent Labour party saw a 5% swing in favour of the Scottish Nationalist Party but still managed to win and retain the seat. This makes it the first parliamentary seat that the Labour party have won since the General Election in 2005 and breaks a long run of defeats including the humiliating loss of the Glasgow East seat. Party supporters have heralded the result as evidence of the unfortunately named "Brown Bounce" and taken it as a vindication of their highly successful economic policy.

Have won a fight no-one else bothered to turn up too the government appear to have let it all go to their heads and started having policy ideas again. Chief and probably most dangerous amongst them is the announcement that they plan to cut taxes in order to deal with the recession. Being as populist as it is stupid the announcement appears to have forced the Conservatives to drop their much more sensible policy on the issue and join in some sort of tax-cutting beauty contest where all parties compete to see who can come up with the largest and most damaging tax cut.

The other classic they've come out with today is the announcement that they are planning to ban the sale of discounted alcohol from supermarkets and off-licenses and to end drinks promotions such as happy hours and Buy One Get One Free offers in pubs. This long standing policy idea has been rehashed to cut down on drunken violence and the gloriously vague notion of "Anti-Social Behaviour". As this is the policy of a very stupid government it is of course a very stupid idea but not one totally without merit. For example I think we should find out exactly what this governments been drinking over these last few years and ban it immediately because it's clearly having a corrosive and damaging effect on society.