The man in a Mr Bean mask threw a punch. Its intended recipient, without mask, was pulled away by his girlfriend just in time. Mr Bean’s own partner screamed: "Leave it Paul, don’t ruin my night." Bean pointed at his foe. "Watch it next time I see yer, yer clown."

Behind them, where I was standing, a late-teen girl was oblivious. She danced slowly across the water feature outside the town hall, her face turned to the moon. This civic pond was so shallow that she seemed to be walking on water. Her boyfriend sat on the wall around the edge, holding her shoes. Eleven cathedral bells rang and I went back to my hotel.

Bradford was one of thirteen English towns I spent a weekend in over the course of a year. I travelled in search of words, the result being my book Hatters, Railwaymen and Knitters, a fond look at neglected England via, loosely, the prism of football. I set out from my home in Scotland to find out what the country of my birth now looked and felt like. I had just turned thirty and was losing sight of my identity and of England as she and Scotland drifted apart. You think a midlife crisis is bad? My quarter-life version compelled me to visit Luton, Hinckley and Crewe.

That last line of cynicism was played for cheap laughs. You see, I liked Luton, Hinckley and Crewe. And Bradford, Burnley and Watford. Someone has to, the cheap laugh might continue, so it might as well be me. I wanted to stand up for them, to point out their good parts, laugh with them and show how their stories made England’s history. I also wanted to reject the "chavtowns", Crap Towns ethos that infested British culture in the first part of this century.

Now, I learn, there is to be another Crap Towns book.

Four of the places I visited are on the longlist for the new edition (Bradford, Luton, Newquay and Sheffield). So too is the one in which I was born (Stockton-on-Tees) and the one in which I grew up (well, older), York (a city, but who’s splitting hairs when you’ve got toilet reading to push). Crap Towns hides its disdain for ‘lesser’ people in ‘lesser’ places behind its format. It is pomposity via photos of re-badged Arndale Centres, sneering via rankings that set the inhabitants of, say, Coventry against those of Nuneaton when they should be uniting in the face of an elite that knows nothing about their lives. It deigns to tell the whole stories of place and people in a couple of quarter-pages, writing them and their Britain off. A bit of fun? Reading Crap Towns is the modern equivalent of watching a good old hanging.

The editors of Crap Towns Returns are of a similar age to me. We’ve grown up in the same times though, given the Oxbridge whiff of their works (The Idler, anyone?), not necessarily the same England. I find their worldview puzzling, and choose not to believe in a society that stands taking the piss from the sides, accepting its lot and looking down on that of others. That’s just no fun. I like an England that celebrates what it has and looks to change for the better what it hasn’t. It laughs along, not at. It is progressive, not hopeless. 

The England I wish to take readers to looks at Stockton-on-Tees and its neighbour Middlesbrough and sees places that changed the world. That Middlesbrough – in 2009 Channel Four’s ‘Worst Place to Live’ – is one of steel that coiled the globe like a writhing nest of serpents. As a poem on a wall near the football stadium recounts, Every metropolis / Came from Ironopolis. Today, Middlesbrough and Stockton are scarred by things done to them in the decade me and the Crap Towns editors grew up. It is for rightly-defensive local MPs to list these towns’ modern assets, and for me to add that when you walk by a bar in Henley-on-Thames, you don’t hear an avalanche of laughter as you do on Teesside (that might be unfair to Henley-on-Thames. I’ve never been. I’m just adopting Crap Towns editorial principles for this article).

It sees in Bradford, as well as the comedy and romance of a Saturday night by the town hall, a civilising city, the home of the Independent Labour Party and one of the first places on earth to school all of its children, and provide its citizens with water and electricity. Moreover, this Bradford in this England, if you open your eyes, is at times wistfully beautiful: the Werther’s Original packet-coloured stone of its buildings, the Flat Iron contours of Little Germany, Asian and white teenagers giggling together as the rain ping-pongs all around them. 

Luton is the mesmeric buzz of Bury Park, with its unidentifiable vegetables that look like pock-marked comets and the old man in the Conservative Club who waved a walking stick at me for forgetting to pay my 50p entrance fee. It is the sign on a tree in gorgeous Wardown Park which reads "Budgie Found ... please phone", the creaking floorboards and proud displays of the town museum. There, a case contains charred artefacts from the night locals burnt down the town hall in protest at the treatment of WWI troops and bereaved families. And it is not the English Defence League, nor those who distort Islam: it is the white man in that museum telling me "immigration and racism are only a problem when they decide to turn up" and the Asian taxi driver eyeballing me in the rearview mirror and saying "the likes of the EDL or the mad mosques, they don’t speak for the town."

When I take readers to Sheffield, it is to show them the First City of Rebellion, and the home of kicking and dreaming; football’s granddad. It is to take them uphill on a tram to Jarvis’ house, then back into town via synth pop and for a pint of good ale by the coal fire in the pub where the Arctic Monkeys first spellbound an audience. I want readers to switch off Bravo TV, which has us thinking that every Saturday night in every town and city is a riot of people being sick on each other’s tattoos. I want them to sit watching with me, watching the handsome young indie boy helping the old lady onto the tram, watching the police get kisses.

Let the readers finish at the end of England, in Newquay, as I did. There, I sat with my back to the country. Everything was perfect: the sun slid into a gluey ocean and waves smashed cliffs like foamy wrecking balls.

‘YOU WANT A CRISP, MATE?’ A voice from behind startled me. An accompanying hand then appeared over my shoulder, its scales and divots pointing to a life lived wholeheartedly. Its fingers were clasping a cheesy Quaver.

Beauty and the bizarre. That’s my England.

I don’t think it would be the most controversial statement to suggest that MPs are not popular creatures. They weren't before news came out their expenses were at a record high, and they certainly aren't after. Whisper the word “MP” in a crowd and you will soon get the impression most of the public would like their representatives dropped to minimum wage, and the spare money spent on a giant stick for voters to take turns to poke them with.

That’s one reason why job-sharing – the idea of two MPs literally sharing the job – has always seemed against the grain. Voters aren’t keen on the MPs they’ve got, so a move that means there’d be more of them might not go down that well. In a way, it's a bit like the political equivalent of telling someone you’ve got a rat in your kitchen and them responding, “Oh that’s terrible… Would you like another?”

It’s refreshing, then, that new research shows, actually, voters aren’t that fussed about having job-sharing MPs (feelings on rats in kitchens to come later.) Philip Cowley, Professor of Parliamentary Government at the University of Nottingham, and Dr Rosie Campbell, Senior Lecturer in Politics at Birkbeck, University of London, found that only a minority actively opposed the idea. Moreover, once the reasons were explained – for instance, it could help more disabled people or women into power – the number of people saying they’d vote for a job-sharing candidate outnumbered those who wouldn’t. And when hypothetical descriptions were given (such as being approachable or their background before politics), what a candidate was like proved more significant to voters than whether they were by themselves or came as a pair. Which seems quite logical if you consider how you’d feel choosing between one Iain Duncan Smith and two people with a sense of reality (or indeed, terrifyingly, two Iain Duncan Smiths).

Done well, job-sharing could be like two-for-the-price-of-one. Of course, if you believe that politicians are inept, corrupt wasters then you’d be getting double the lot of inept, corrupt wasters. Which is the opposite of good maths. But if you believe that, actually, most MPs are fairly hardworking, decent humans doing a moderately tough job for (at least in part) some sort of civic purpose, then getting twice as much of that sounds a good deal. More to the point, you’d have embraced a mechanism that means odds are on, those two MPs would, for once, be outside the usual clique of advantage – may well be “normals",  as they are so affectionately called.

Whichever way you look at it, we’ve got a disgustingly unrepresentative Parliament. Rich white men are consistently the ones in power and, unless you believe that sort of arbitrarily chosen type of person happens to be the most capable, there are obviously mechanisms that are keeping everyone else out. One of those is the demanding hours: hours that are impossible for many people who are disabled, have children, or have other work or voluntary commitments to meet. The type of people who, funnily enough, voters might be more drawn to in the first place.

Other, bigger changes are needed to help fix this; for instance, more all-women short-lists (and while we’re at it, addressing why women are still the ones whose careers are much more commonly affected by becoming a parent.) But job-sharing, once you get past the practicalities, seems like a good option.

The Greens have already come out as supporting it, the Liberal Democrats have produced a policy paper for debate at Spring conference, Labour backbencher John McDonnell has even put forward a bill on it. Perhaps now voters have been shown to be open to the idea, Parties might start to really do something about it. After all, a by-product of improved representation may be getting more of the electorate onside – by letting in the sort of people voters have been asking for all along. People who have “real jobs” in the local area, as opposed to career politicians with a knowledge of PR. Disabled people, not shut out of work, who can represent millions like them. Women who are juggling work and childcare. Or as David Nuttal MP put it, “a Parliament made of Tweedledees and Tweedledums.”

There’s an ever-growing perception of MPs as an alien species, one that should be punished with uncompetitive income and general misery. As Party conference season starts and innocent cities and beaches are infested, perhaps it’s time the political elite, like voters, start thinking about fresh ideas. Why not job-sharing? Tweedledees and Tweedledums might make an improved face for British politics.

@frances__ryan 
http://differentprinciples.co.uk/about/

Entrepreneur. It is a word that, courtesy of television programmes like "The Apprentice" and "Dragon's Den", conjures up images of a lone wolf or "dragon" with a business vision. When one thinks of entrepreneurialism one immediately thinks of personalities like Sir Richard Branson and Steve Jobs building a brand and a business empire in their own image, hewn from their own industry and wild creativity. Entrepreneurialism appears then to be something wholly individual, almost egotistical, and consumer-facing. It is not a term one would often associate with big businesses and certain sectors – professional services being particularly close to my heart - seen as almost anti-entrepreneurial. 

Yet I believe any good business has an entrepreneurial heart beating at its core. Entrepreneurialism is all about change, creating a competitive advantage so that you can outperform your competitors. It is this urge to create competition and then to beat it that lies at the centre of successful entrepreneurship.

The most successful companies empower people to think in an entrepreneurial manner by enabling employees to feel able to express themselves within a safe environment, to challenge, to be challenged and to talk openly without fear of being derided. Promoting diversity in the workplace, both in terms of skill and background, enables businesses to create what you might term a ‘melting pot of ideas’ capable of producing a regular stream of creative ideas based on the pooling of a wide variety of influences and knowledge. I would go so far as to argue that under the right conditions - a blend of framework, incentives and liberalism - businesses can produce an entrepreneurial spirit capable of matching the most creative of "dragons". Fostering a global community of budding young entrepreneurs is a subject close to my heart and something I am personally involved with, sitting as I do on the board of Youth Business International (YBI), a global charity with members in 40 countries - inspired by the Prince of Wales and linked to the Prince's Trust - whose purpose is to encourage young entrepreneurs. The cultivating of young entrepreneurs around the world not only helps stimulate growth, it also eases youth unemployment, which is a massive global problem.

A big part of entrepreneurialism is based on making calculated risks. For any business with ambitious growth plans it is no different. Companies make calculated risks all the time in an effort to expand their frontiers – be they geographical, operational or cultural. In a post-financial-crisis environment, however, businesses must be able to retain their “permission for entrepreneurialism”. There is an inherent contradiction in political rhetoric which on one hand exhorts banks to lend more so that businesses can grow and on the other enshrines an anti-risk culture. Expansion at this phase of the economic cycle is especially tricky and the importance of a well timed and strategic move plays heavily on the minds of business leaders internationally. After a period of economically-induced relative stasis, I believe we are about to see a wave of entrepreneurial activity, whereby progressive businesses seek first mover advantage. As well as M&A activity, this could manifest itself in the form of investment into new geographies, potentially diversifying further from the developed markets, new technologies or into human capital - providing staff with the support and training required to develop new skills and new ways of thinking.

The appetite to take informed, strategic risks is a cornerstone of growth – and, as the post-crisis tremors show signs of abating, the ability of companies’ to act on this impulse will increase. Entrepreneurialism is not merely something reserved for the gifted individual with an idea and the bravery and perseverance to pursue that idea in a highly competitive marketplace, it is a central tenet of capitalism and an essential component of any sound business strategy. Without entrepreneurialism, businesses stagnate. Perhaps in the UK we need to ramp up what has historically been a strong part of the "national character" - an outward looking urge to trade new items with new territories.

If you want to see Dragon's Den in action, look no further than global businesses and the internal culture they foster and you will find more often than not a thriving hub of creativity and bold business ideas.

There were moments in Vince Cable's speech to the Lib Dem conference where you had to pause to remind yourself that he is a serving member of the government, rather than an opposition politician. While Nick Clegg and Danny Alexander are focused on ensuring that the Lib Dems receive their share of the credit for the economic recovery, Cable cast himself as a Cassandra warning of a new and dangerous housing boom.

In the most striking passage of his speech, he declared that "there are already amber lights flashing to warn us of history repeating itself" and derided those (George Osborne) who would settle for "a short-term spurt of growth fuelled by old-fashioned property boom and bankers rediscovering their mojo". After David Cameron rather mildly remarked, "It's not right to cast Vince as a perpetual Jeremiah. He can brighten up from time to time", Cable pulled no punches in response, quipping that "David Cameron has called me a Jeremiah, but you’ll recall from your reading of the Old Testament that Jeremiah was right." He added: "He [Jeremiah] warned that Jerusalem would be overrun by the armies of Nebuchadnezzar.  In my own Book of Lamentations I described how Gordon Brown’s New Jerusalem was overrun by an army of estate agents, property speculators and bankers.

"The problem we have now is that the invaders are coming back.  They have a bridgehead in London and the south east of England. They must be stopped.  Instead we need sustainable growth."

Cable has never been a stirring platform orator and the response from delegates was more muted than in previous years but the speech was the most significant he has delivered since becoming Business Secretary. More than at any other point, he has gone exceeding the normal limits of collective responsibility.

While the speech opened with a recollection of the "unhealthy tribalism" and "Tammany Hall culture" that led him to resign from Labour in the 1970s (which he suggested had been reborn in Falkirk and other "Labour fiefdoms"), it was otherwise dominated by excoriating attacks on the Tories. He declared that "the nasty party" was back, with "dog whistle politics, orchestrated by an Australian Rottweiler.  Hostility towards organised labour, people on benefits and immigrant minorities." He rebuked his "cabinet colleagues" for "careless talk" about Britain leaving the EU and declared: "Let’s remember that we voted to join the present Coalition.  We did not vote to join a coalition with UKIP."

Elsewhere, in a rebuke to those on the right of the Lib Dems, such as Jeremy Browne and David Laws, seeking to push the party in a more free market direction, he warned that it was not enough to be "a nicer version of the Tories", again signalling his instinctive preference for Labour.

Ahead of 2015, the balancing act required of the Lib Dems is to differentiate themselves from the Tories without discrediting the government they have served in for more than three years. After Cable's unreserved attacks on the coalition's economic policies, Clegg will feel that the Business Secretary has failed in that task.

It’s a strange feeling, approaching the American border as a citizen. We are raised in a bubble, and only at the border of our own nation do we realise that anyone, even our own, becomes a possible enemy simply by virtue of having stepped outside.

We are raised strictly conditioned to the righteousness of our attitude to security, a conditioning that’s become more explicit since 9/11. Early on in the months that followed the event, domestic travelers removed shoes and parceled baby formula and tossed out water bottles with pride, as if performing a duty to our nation. So many of us now are inundated with messaging that implies a pat and peer at our exposed body is an indignity it would be unpatriotic to protest.

The average American doesn’t go abroad much or regularly, thanks to the way the cost of international travel intersects with the startling size of our own homeland and its apparently endless chasms and mountains and lakesides and things to do. The self-centeredness which the rest of the world seems happy to credit us with probably has to do, at least in part, with our embarrassment of luck when it comes to unspoiled places, and how rarely it is necessary or possible for us to look outside for them.

For most of us it’s not a sinister or wilful ignorance, I promise. I didn’t start traveling abroad until I became a video games and technology journalist in my late twenties, nor living abroad until I met a particular London gentleman during a games conference in Nottingham last year and decided I wanted to see some more of, er, the UK’s games industry.

My sweetheart has traveled quite a lot more than I have, and loves telling border control stories, especially those to do with how his stamps from Iran, Turkey and China particularly rankled American customs agents as they paged through this tall, roving Englishman’s passport. When we went to my hometown, New York, together, before we were temporarily divided, citizens from foreigners, we spotted a portrait of several proud, uniformed, flag-draped customs officers framed in a place of honor. The shiny plaque proclaimed that lots of New York City’s border guards had once been military servicemen and women, too.

“Jesus,” breathed my English gentleman, darkly, looking more closely at the proud, straight-backed Americans who traded in their guns for inky stamping devices. He would go on to be permitted to come home with me, but not after being held for further questioning in Level 2 security.

Whether you’re coming or going, whether home or abroad, border control is a surreal space, uniquely populated with angst. It is a place between nations, its air pumped thick with friction and fear of one another. You wonder what kind of person works in such a place. Probably sickos.

One thing no one thinks in that belly-dropping, breath-held moments when they pass their documents through a slot in a Plexiglas window to be evaluated by a stranger is, This would make a fun computer game.

But that’s just what designer Lucas Pope did, fascinated by the multitasking, the multiple documents and passports and ID cards and landing sheets and big, bright stamps. Most computer games are power fantasies, but in exploring the daily work of a border control agent, Pope’s concocted a disempowerment fantasy. What if you weren’t the brave spy or roguish smuggler, but the guy who has the boring job of stopping him?

Pope is easily piqued by the hidden complexity in everyday jobs, particularly those that lie at the intersection of irreconcilable goods: security and transparency, for example. He previously sketched unique little game Republia Times for a 48-hour game jam, intrigued by the ways a national newspaper’s editor-in-chief could (must?) balance the moral mandate of truth with the best interests of the state.

In his newest computer game, Papers, Please, you play a booth employee at the border of the nation of Arstotska, a fictional place with a vintage Soviet Bloc vibe and a chilly, grim colour palette. You start your day by lifting a heavy shutter, summoning the first in a line of anxious silhouettes with a mangled, unintelligible megaphone bark. A lined, tired-eyed face approaches your window with a foreign passport. You need to check the issue date, the issuing city, watching for discrepancies that might suggest an expired document or worse, a sinister forgery. If they’re coming for work, they need a permit; if they’re citizens, they need an ID card.

Just from a mechanical standpoint, balancing a complex set of components and variables is surprisingly engaging, a constant test of your acuity. The game has a delightful tactility to it: stamping feels so weighty and wet you can nearly smell the ink, and papers shuffle with excellent brittleness. As days pass in the game, the demands increase -- it soon becomes clear it’s nearly-impossible to process everyone in the same methodical way, without mistakes. You start losing money. Your son gets sick. And that’s when Papers, Please starts getting truly interesting.

You make your salary based on the number of travellers you process daily without error. At the end of the day, you see a tally of your earnings and penalties, and an update on the wellbeing of your family: your wife and son, and the ageing mother-in-law and uncle who also rely on you for what meagre support you can eke out for them.

Your job processing documents begins to get overwhelming. Sometimes someone’s documents don’t quite check out, and it’s up to you to make a choice -- do you fulfill your role defending the state, or do you turn a blind eye in the interest of keeping a family together? You can bend the rules, but it costs you. It costs your own family. Without this job, you’re all out of options.

Sometimes you have a particularly gruelling day, have made one too many mistakes, and someone offers you a little bribe. What do you do? One day, an intruder from rival nation Kolechia confronts the border guards and blows himself up, killing workers at the checkpoint. You don’t know why -- each day you get a glimpse of the broader political climate in the world through the local headlines, but can you trust the news? Shouldn’t you look a little more closely at Kolechian passports?

I thought of my many unpleasant American homecomings, waiting to see the passport agent, noticing Muslim families or men wearing turbans who’d been shunted to benches alongside the room, where I knew they would be waiting much longer than me.

Papers, Please also asks you: could you silently assist revolutionaries, even if you’re not sure if they’re the right sort? Could you bring yourself to subject a thin, haggard woman to a nude body scan -- if there’s a slim chance she might be wearing a bomb? 

One day in the game you deny some forged documents, and there’s an argument. The shadow of a rifle’s butt edges into frame, stuns the illegal interloper with a dull thud. The guards drag him away. All you can do is call for the next immigrant. Are you doing the right thing?

It’s not that the game makes me feel sorry for the laughing, square-shouldered agent who, on a trip to Austin, Texas, seemed to cock his finger at me almost arbitrarily, pulling me out of line to pat me with an excess of enthusiasm through my thin summer dress, mostly because he could.

But it does make me realise that the strange, ambiguous fear cloud that overhangs national border zones doesn’t just affect those of us who pass through, but also those of us who, for one reason or another, have to work there. Maybe they feel as conflicted about the body-creased, luminous and unsettling RapiScan photos they have to look at as we do about the fact we have to offer them.

Papers, Please is steeply challenging, and full of sick-making moments, just one more exemplar about how games feel most meaningful when they don’t have “fun” or “entertainment” as a primary directive. Designer Pope has told me he’s a little disappointed some reviews have lavished upon the un-fun-ness of Papers, Please. It is, in fact, quite fun, serving the subtle thrill that comes with learning -- over time, players aren’t so quick to become overwhelmed, find they memorise the obscure spellings of made-up issuing cities, enjoy blithely shuttling documents like an expert. Some of the characters are funny, too, comedy stragglers stranded in thin attempts to fool you, or local regulars of whom you might grow fond.

Papers, Please is explicitly not an “educational game,” nor a preachy one. But like a prism, it illuminates incredible swathes of a complicated issue by casting the player as one of that issue’s smallest, least remarkable components, and asking them to perform what is on its face a set of mechanical behaviours. Nor is it any kind of fantasy: the invented elements of Papers, Please -- its fictional nations, the intentional vagaries of its details -- make the game more thought-provoking than if it were literal; because Arstotzka isn’t any one place, it could be any place at all.

Here’s a sad thing about bureaucracy: it applies systems thinking to entire populations of human beings. We become a series of statistics and possible flags. And in our eyes, an agent becomes an emblem of whatever belief we maintain: that the State is just, or that it isn’t. Games have incredible capacity to create empathy, and sometimes that empathy can be more enlightening than a power fantasy. What if you were just an employee trying to do the right thing?

With the Liberal Democrats' ever-weakening claim to be the party of civil liberties, the last seven days are a new low. Just last Tuesday, not a single one of their MPs opposed the party of the government’s draconian Lobbying Bill that muzzles charities and campaigners. Seemingly happy with the chilling effect the proposals will have on civic society’s contribution to our democracy, they trooped through the lobby in support. What’s more, it’s a Lib Dem minister leading on the Bill.

And just 24 hours later, I almost choked on my cornflakes at reports in the Guardian that the Lib Dems will repeal legislation on secret courts. What’s astonishing is that this is an Act of Parliament their MPs voted in favour of, and helped put on the statute books, just five months ago. Having spent 11 months involved in that bill, I was pleased at the stance taken by last year’s Liberal Democrat conference, asking their MPs to support Labour in opposing the worst excesses of the proposals. Unfortunately, the party leadership refused.

Having met many Lib Dem members, I know this issue caused considerable anger, with some resigning in disgust. On secret courts, the Lib Dem leadership suffered one of only a handful of annual conference defeats since 2010. And this is symptomatic of a growing divide between the grassroots and their MPs. Many Lib Dem supporters will see last week’s newspaper reports on secret courts as a stunt to head off another confrontation at their conference. Looking at the issues up for votes at their conference, I doubt whether Lib Dem members, activists or supporters have been fooled.

The Lib Dem leadership desperately spin that they are a moderating influence on Tory excesses. But in areas of justice and the constitution, tumbleweed blows through the party's benches when it comes to areas of policy that should be core to their beliefs. Lib Dem MPs happily supported government changes to individual electoral registration that could see millions of eligible voters losing their vote. They voted to reduce the number of MPs by a figure designed only to benefit the Tories. And they’ve barely made a squeak on the dismantling of access to justice – cuts to legal aid - and the curtailing of judicial review. Their silence on weakening freedom of information through ever more public money in the hands of private companies beyond the scope of the legislation is deafening.

Of course difficult decisions are faced on a day to day basis, as Labour knows well. Getting the balance right between what is in the interests of protecting the public and what upholds the rights of all of our citizens is something on occasions we got wrong. The Lib Dems never missed the chance to moralise on this when Labour was in government, yet have jettisoned any semblance of a truly liberal position in many areas at the first prospect of a ministerial car and grand office. It’s left to Labour to champion legal and constitutional protections our citizens need in a healthy democracy and it’s a shame we couldn’t do this together in Parliament.

The Lib Dems must learn one very big lesson – that the Tories cannot be trusted with civil liberties and our constitution. The Tories have shown themselves a majoritarian party, seeking the eradication of criticism and challenge, curtailing checks and balances and putting themselves beyond the rule of law. Just last week we saw the smear on charities by Chris Grayling. Their idea of democracy is if you’re not with us, you should be muzzled, snuffed out, or put back in your box.

But politics isn't a battle of ideas if you gag those you don’t agree with. This isn’t a democracy Labour believes in – nor, I suspect, Lib Dem members. Labour recognises that we are stronger as a nation through checks and balances that hold to account those in positions of power, including governments and public agencies. Enormous value flows from flourishing campaigns, charities and civic organisations and their mass-membership participating in politics. All of these are crucial to the lifeblood of a modern democracy, not threats.

Of course, I welcome the Lib Dems agreeing with Labour in defending the Human Rights Act, and membership of the European Court of Human Rights. But I’m afraid that on many issues, the mere association with the Tories is enough to tarnish their liberal veneer. They are the lobby fodder the Tories need to deliver their attacks on our constitutional rights. 

And so it falls to Labour to defend our citizen’s rights and stand up to powerful vested interests, be them economic, in the media, or political. Ed Miliband has made it clear that we won’t tolerate abuse by elites, monopolies, or those with concentrated power. To those turning their backs on the Lib Dems on civil liberties issues, this doesn’t leave you without electoral options. On the contrary – under Ed Miliband’s leadership, it’s Labour that can now lay claim to the mantle of defender of our citizens’ rights.

Sadiq Khan is the shadow justice secretary (with special responsibility for constitutional and political reform)

Britain is not heading for a new economic disaster; it has sustained one long-term national and personal debt crisis. One group, the Green New Deal Group, has been consistent with its critique: economic failure caused public debt to rise and this is where the crisis lies.

The same old mistakes are made again today by those who pull the levers. Unemployment figures are down but this is sustained by part-time or zero-hour contracts and underemployment. Tony Dolphin said in 2012 on these pages: "We know there are many reluctant part-time workers because the Office for National Statistics asks those who are working part-time if they would prefer to be working full-time and 1,418,000 are currently saying "yes" – the highest number since comparable records began in 1992 and an increase of 700,000 over the last four years.”

While the number of unemployed is reduced the amount of work being done doesn't rise. Jobs aren't being created quick enough, it's just more jobs have more people working them. That's not what we had in mind when criticising employment rates.

Another mistake is bank bonuses. In the days before the Big Bang (deregulation of the financial markets in 1986), back when bankers were more trusted than the police, the NHS, and the press, UK merchant banks paid bonuses of around 3-4 per cent of a salary, while some firms only gave Christmas hampers as thanks.

In 1997 the city bonus pool hit £1 billion for the first time. Ten years later: £9bn, 4,000 bonuses of which reached above £1m, a few hundred over £5m, and twenty-odd over £10m. Even after RBS was bailed out, post-Libor scandal, bankers were paid bonuses of £7bn.

And here's another kick in the teeth: according to the figures from the Office for National Statistics, banks and insurers delayed about £700m of bonuses so as not to pay the 50p top rate of income tax.

This is where better control of banks is needed. In 2008 the Green New Deal Group argued that, in the face of economic collapse, government should not revert to type, hoping the market would fix things, but actively intervene. In their second report in 2009, The Cuts Won't Work, the group warned of complacency around freezes to inter-bank lending and the rise of high city bonuses.

Cash injections to save the world, bailouts to save the banks – these are all vindicated in theory as in practice. Quantitative easing was not able to save the country from unemployment, low wages, and low investment because in the following years we had a government that were ideologically committed to austerity. But none the less creating more money and spending more to save later should appeal.

The Green New Deal would be funded through tackling tax evasion and avoidance, a programme of Green Quantitative Easing would generate jobs and economic activity, investment would be made through bailed out banks at sustainable rates of interest, and buying out PFI debt using Green QE money would ensure no more money is wasted through it.

But where further? A local Green New Deal could fund regional and community banks which in turn invests in small and medium enterprises and lends to local people at reasonable rates of interest, putting out of business payday lenders, home creditors, and loan sharks who suck money out of the real economy and profit from people's debt.

Giving this kind of boost to high streets and local communities would provide more jobs, more money in people's pockets, and stop high roads becoming a miserable mix of pawnbrokers, betting shops, and empty fronts.

As opposed to the political status quo, the Green New Deal Group called for a Keynesian solution of more spending to meet economic crisis head-on. It feels vindicated in its decision and continues the same for today. Seeing this through at a national and local would do a great deal to improve on what this government has done so much to ruin.

Update: Loughton has belatedly apologised, while still bizarrely claiming that his comments were misrepresented by the media.

I will of course apologise to Sarah for the comments that have been reported and were certainly not intended or indeed said in that way

— Tim Loughton MP (@timloughton) September 16, 2013

Conservative MP Tim Loughton's repugnant suggestion that Sarah Teather was a poor families minister because she failed to "produce" one of her own has rightly been greeted with outrage. The Telegraph reports that the former Tory education minister told last weekend's Conservative Renewal conference:

The person who was actually in charge of family policy amongst the ministerial team at the DfE was Sarah Teather. Which was a bit difficult because she doesn't really believe in family. She certainly didn't produce one of her own. So it became a bit of a family-free zone. I think that is a huge disappointment.

But responding to criticism on Twitter, Loughton has refused to apologise, feigning disbelief at the anger he has attracted.

Blimey-what am I being panned for now? My criticism was lack of LibDem family policy not of Sarah Teather personally who I always respected

— Tim Loughton MP (@timloughton) September 16, 2013

Unbelievably, he went on to blame "some journo" for "distorting my comments".

If the Tories want this avoid becoming an even more toxic story, they would be wise to bring Loughton to heel now.

Four people, including one police officer, have been killed at the Washington Navy Yard, one of a number of US Navy headquarters based in south-east Washington DC. At least eight others have been injured in the shooting, which took place around 8:20am (13:20GMT) as staff were entering the building at the start of the working day.

Two gunmen have been “contained”, but it is not yet clear whether they have been arrested, shot or taken into custody. Captain Ed Buclatin, director of public affairs at the Navy Installations Command, confirmed on Twitter that more than one shooter was involved.

President Obama is expected to make a statement any time. The Washington Post reported that there were three shooters involved in the incident, which is believed to have begun in the site cafeteria. Over 3,000 people work at the headquarters, which is responsible for coordinating much of the US Navy’s military actions overseas. The area is secured and requires security clearance for access – a factor which has led many to assume the shooters may have had links to the US military.

Vincent C Gray, the Mayor of Washington DC, said in a press conference, "As far as we know this is an isolated incident,". The DC Chief of Police Cathy L Lanier has confirmed that two shooters remain at large on the base.

After his victories on nuclear power, tuition fees and 'Osbornomics', Nick Clegg's winning streak has continued. In line with the leadership's position, Lib Dem delegates have just voted not to reintroduce the 50p tax rate and to maintain the 45p rate, albeit by a margin of just four (224-220).

While party president Tim Farron had called in my interview with him for the party to back the higher rate both to raise additional revenue and to demonstrate that "we are all in it together", Clegg said this morning: "To drive home the message of tax reform I think changing one very specific symbolic tax rate is not really the key part of the matter." The key intervention in the debate came from Vince Cable, who reminded delegates that the party's previous policy was to support a 40p rate alongside a mansion tax and argued that excessively high taxes on income could have negative economic effects.

Had the party voted to back the 50p rate it would have been an unambiguous assertion of its centre-left character, but the result will be seen as an acceptance of the more economically liberal path pursued by Clegg. (Although it is worth remembering that the party previously voted to abandon support for the 50p rate under Ming Campbell's leadership in 2006.) But the narrowness of the victory shows how divided the Lib Dems remain about their ideological direction. While Orange Bookers such as David Laws and Jeremy Browne would probably like to see the top rate reduced to 40p, Farron and the party's left have demonstrated the support that exists for a more social democratic approach.

Should the Lib Dems be presented with a choice of coalition partner after the next election, with both Labour and the Tories winning enough seats to form majority governments with their support, it is these two groups that will be pitted against each other in a battle for the party's soul.

WARNING: This blog is for people currently watching Breaking Bad series 5, part 2. It contains spoilers.

In the run up to the second half of series 5 of Breaking Bad, AMC released a short, cinematic trailer in which Walter White reads the Shelley poem, “Ozymandias”. “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings”, he growls, “Look on my works ye mighty and despair!” The words, and the gesture, nicely reflect the manic egocentrism of Walter’s alter-ego, the empire-building drug lord Heisenberg. At the same time, it reminds us, as the poem does, that all earthly things will fade, and that in the long run - “chemistry is the study of change” - nobody will be remembered, and nothing will survive.

In the prologue to series 5 episode 14, we are back in To’hajiilee, but not as we left it last week. Instead we return to Walt and Jesse’s first cook, in their beloved RV, which Walter leaves for a moment to make a call to his wife. We see him as a liar in training, explaining that Bogdan is keeping him late at the car wash, but that he’d like to enjoy some “family time” at the weekend. The call mirrors Hank's heartfelt message to Marie last week. Skyler suggests the name “Holly” for their daughter. Before the opening credits roll, Walt, Jesse and the RV disappear. That first cook represented the beginning of Walter’s material wealth: the shootout in the desert represents its end.

When we return to the present, we see that Hank has been shot and Gomie is dead. The Nazis descend and Walt begs Jack to spare Hank’s life. He reveals that all his money - “80 million dollars” - is buried nearby. When Jack refers to Hank as a “fed”, Walter corrects him: “His name is Hank.” But Hank goes one better: “My name is ASAC [Assistant Special Agent in Charge] Schrader, and you can go fuck yourself.” Jack kills Hank, but not before he tells Walter that he is the smartest person he knows, but still too stupid to realise Jack’s mind was already made up. Walt collapses to the ground, knees first, and the camera forces us to peer into his crooked dank maw: Vince Gilligan is the Edvard Munch of New Mexico.

Buried treasure. Image: Ursula Coyote/AMC.

Todd is clearly shaken by seeing Mr White betrayed. The rest of the Nazis load up Walter’s fortune, and replace the hole in the ground with the bodies of Hank and Gomie, giving a grim new significance to the coordinates pinned on Walter's fridge. Jack decides to settle with Walt by leaving him a single barrel of cash, insisting they shake hands (zoom in on the swastika) to confirm that their business is settled. He chastises his men when they complain about the loss: “Jesus, what’s with all the greed? It’s unattractive.” But Hank’s death has sent Walt spiralling. He spots Jesse hiding under the car in which he and the DEA duo arrived, and orders his execution. Todd, however, has a reason to keep Jesse alive. He needs help cooking, and we later see a badly beaten Pinkman emerge from a hole near the aircraft carrier where the Nazis go to work. By now the episode has taken on the feel of a horror movie, as Jesse shuffles along, one eye closed, attached to a metal cord. As he was dragged from To’hajiilee, Walt tried to hurt Jesse for what he sees as his disloyalty (snitching, after all, is frowned upon by kingpins): “I watched Jane die,” he tells him.

Later, while Walt purchases a second hand pickup truck from an elderly Navajo man, Marie shows up at the A1 Car Wash, convinced of Walter’s arrest and the forthcoming conclusion of the family’s troubles. She forces Skyler to tell Walter Jr everything. Unsurprisingly, he thinks it’s all “bullshit”. When they drive baby Holly home, they find Walt packing clothes for the four of them. Skyler is confused, and asks where Hank is, but Walter cannot even begin to formulate a plausible falsity this time. “I negotiated...” he falters. As “Flynn” goes to pack, the camera cuts behind the house phone and a block of knives on the kitchen counter. It’s the classic conundrum: which to pick up.

Skyler opts for the weapon and a tussle ensues. “What are you doing!? We’re a family,” howls Walt, as his son protects his mother and he realises the position he has put them in. I’m going to confess that I was so tense during this scene that I drew on myself. All I can say is it’s a good job it was a uni-ball I had in my hand at that moment and not a knife, or Mr White would have another body to add to his count. Walt steals baby Holly and does a runner. Skyler follows him out into the street and drops, dotted in her husband’s blood, to her knees - mirroring Walt's own reaction to Hank’s death at the start of the episode.

Walter makes off with his daughter, Holly. Image: Ursula Coyote/AMC.

With gaffer tape wrapped around his hand, Walter changes Holly in a public toilet. On cue, the baby begins to call for its mother (Emmy contender?) Back at the house Skyler and Marie are surrounded by police officers. When Walter calls, his voice is pure Heisenberg. What he says is staggering: “Tow the line or you will end up just like Hank,” he tells his wife. It is his acquisitive, remorseless and desirous self that screams, “I built this, me alone, nobody else!” reducing the family to the individual and compounding the fact that he has no one left. The words and the voice do not appear to match the image of a man weeping heavy tears as he prepares to give his daughter away, using a fire engine as a kind of escrow service. At the end of the episode, Walter disappears inside Goodman’s friend's red Primavera of no return: diminished, deserted and lost.

Read last week's blog here.

1. Nick Clegg is becoming the heir to Blair (Times)

The Liberal Democrat leader is winning admirers by standing against the extremes of left and right, writes Rachel Sylvester.

2. Missiles alone cannot secure US credibility (Financial Times)

Obama has grasped the superior power of economic strength, says Gideon Rachman.

3. The long arm of Plebgate (Guardian)

The never-ending police inquiry into the treatment of Andrew Mitchell should be of concern to all democrats, says Chris Mullin.

4. Why the Mail stands shoulder to shoulder with the BBC... (Daily Mail)

The remedy being widely canvassed at Westminster is an assault on freedom of expression that should horrify all lovers of liberty, says a Daily Mail editorial.

5. Why the Lib Dems are doomed to be unpopular – and also powerful (Independent)

Clegg and his party still have cause for hope, but it has little to do with the polls, writes Steve Richards.

6. Full-face veils aren't barbaric – but our response can be (Guardian)

The veil is a perfectly proper subject for debate in a liberal democracy – so long as Muslim women are not excluded, says Maleiha Malik.

7. Vote on EU will not help Cameron’s critics (Financial Times)

The polls show a dwindling of the salience of the issue – it grips a minority and bores the rest, writes Janan Ganesh.

8. Iran and the Bomb (Times)

The west is right to seek a diplomatic solution with Tehran to defuse an emerging nuclear threat, argues a Times editorial.

9. iPhone 5S: has Apple given up on innovation? (Guardian)

Once a company renowned for breaking new ground, Apple is turning into a typical American corporation, writes Aditya Chakrabortty.

10. Who lets murderers out of jail to do it again? (Daily Telegraph)

The safety of the public is woefully neglected by our prison and probation services, writes Philip Johnston.

UK raises £3bn from Lloyds share sale as further sign of confidence in recovery (FT)

The UK government has raised £3.2bn from the sale of a 6 per cent stake in Lloyds Banking Group, it confirmed on Tuesday, in the first stage of the reprivatisation of the high street lender.

Jobs champion Janet Yellen leads Fed race as Larry Summers forced out (Telegraph)

Global markets are euphoric over the defeat of Larry Summers, blocked by Senate Democrats from taking over the US Federal Reserve. His ties to Wall Street doomed him.

JPMorgan in talks to pay $800m ‘whale’ fine (FT)

JPMorgan Chase is in talks to pay at least $800m to settle with securities and bank regulators over the $6bn “London whale” trading loss, but faces additional fines from US derivatives regulators not part of the current pact, people familiar with the matter said.

Barclays to refund at least 300,000 borrowers (BBC)

Barclays Bank is to refund at least 300,000 personal loan customers because it made mistakes on their paperwork.

Mario Draghi risks row with Germany over bank plan (Telegraph)

Mario Draghi has put the European Central Bank on a collision course with Berlin after insisting that Europe needs a single authority to wind up failing banks — just two days after Germany said the idea was legally questionable.

UK Financial Investments (UKFI) is planning to sell about 6 per cent of placing shares in Lloyds Banking Group held by HM Treasury, marking the beginning of the bank’s privatisation process.

At the peak of financial crisis in 2008, the UK government pumped in £20.5bn into Lloyds. The placing is expected to comprise 4.28 billion of Lloyds’ ordinary shares.

With this sale, the Treasury’s shareholding in the banking group will be reduced from about 38.7 per cent to about 32.7 per cent.

UKFI has not disclosed details of the price and the number of placing shares.

HM Treasury, in a statement, said: “We want to get the best value for the taxpayer, maximise support for the economy and restore them to private ownership. The government will only conclude a sale if these objectives are met.”

The sale process is being kicked off in the wake of improvement in the banking group’s mortgage lending and share value, apart from anticipating that the group can start paying dividends from 2014.

Furthermore, UKFI and HM Treasury have agreed not to sell further shares in Lloyds for a period of 90 days following the completion of the sale of placing shares.

However, bankers anticipate that future sales may include an offering to private retail investors.

JPMorgan, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, UBS and Lazard are handling the sale.

BofA Merrill Lynch, JP Morgan Cazenove and UBS Investment Bank have been appointed as joint book-runners.

Lazard is acting as capital markets adviser, while Slaughter and May is acting as seller’s legal counsel to UKFI in respect of English law.

Based on Lloyds’ closing share price of 77.36 pence on Monday, the stake would be worth £3.3bn.

UKFI was created in November 2008 to manage the British government’s investments in the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), Lloyds and UK Asset Resolution (UKAR).

The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) has opened an investigation to find whether professional services firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) acted independently while conducting the audit of the Berkeley Group Holdings.

As part of investigation, the British accounting watchdog will look into PwC’s audit of Berkeley’s annual financial statements for the year ended 30 April 2012 under the Accountancy Scheme with a particular focus on the joining of a former PwC partner on Berkeley’s board last year.

PwC partner Glyn Barker joined Berkeley’s board as a non-executive director in January 2012, after serving the accounting firm for 35 years. Barker was most recently vice chairman of UK at PwC.

Confirming the receipt of the investigation letter, PwC in a statement said: “We will continue to fully cooperate with the FRC’s enquiries. We take our independence responsibilities very seriously.”

Berkeley, a house-building company based in Surrey, did not comment on the probe. However, Tony Pidgley, the founder and chairman of Berkeley, told Reuters: “As far as we’re concerned Glyn has had a very distinguished career and we are very pleased to have him on the board.”

Last month, FRC launched an investigation under the Accountancy Scheme into the accounting and auditing of interest rate swap arrangements which gave rise to a prior period adjustment in the financial statements for the year ended 31 December 2012.

FRC, which did not reveal the time line of the investigation, operates independent disciplinary arrangements for accountants and actuaries. It oversees the regulatory activities of the accountancy and actuarial professional bodies.

The return of economic growth and Labour's fall in popularity has convinced the Lib Dems that there's little to be gained from an early exit from the coalition. The alternative of a confidence and supply deal with the Tories is viewed as the worst of all possible worlds. It would do nothing to placate those voters who despise them for propping up a Conservative government (indeed, this charge would have even more resonance), whilst antagonising those who believe they were right to enter coalition "in the national interest".

But during his day of dissent yesterday, Vince Cable used an evening fringe meeting to suggest that the coalition could break up before 2015. He said: "It's certainly possible. We are not at the stage of talking about that process. It is obviously a very sensitive one. It has got to be led by the leader. We have not yet had those conversations."

He later added on Newsnight that the position would be "collectively decided" closer to the election and that "all kinds of things are possible". But on Sky News this morning, Danny Alexander avoided such ambiguity in a calculated slap-down to Cable. He said:

This coalition will continue until the end of this Parliament as we promised for the very simple reason that we have a very big job to do - to clean up the economic mess that Labour left behind and entrench the recovery we are starting to see.

Vince was asked at a fringe meeting to speculate on a range of options. What I'm saying is that we have always made clear our firm intention is to make sure this coalition continues until the end.

We are not going to walk away from that job months or years before the end of the coalition government. We have big Lib Dem commitments to deliver.

lt's not the first time that Alexander and Cable, the party's two most senior economic spokesmen, have found themselves at odds during the Lib Dem conference.

After Cable warned that the government's Help To Buy scheme was in danger of creating a new housing bubble ("the danger lights have been flashing for some time") and suggested that its second phase should be limited to those regions where the market remains depressed, Alexander issued a stern rebuke, declaring that "We are a million miles away from a housing bubble in this country."

He added: "Right now the problem we face in the housing market is we are not building enough new homes and there are vast numbers of young people in work who could afford the monthly payments on their mortgage but simply can't afford the deposit they need to get a mortgage. The whole point of the second phase of the Help to Buy scheme is to help those people fulfil their aspirations and in doing so ensure there is more construction activity, that there are more new homes being built."

With these two clashes, the private tensions between Cable and Alexander, who many Lib Dems believe has been captured by George Osborne, are becoming increasingly public.