Tom Clougherty

In The Times this week, Rachel Sylvester wrote of the Liberal Democrats:

Richard White had an interesting piece on the Guardian website on Tuesday, concerning plain packaging laws for cigarettes. Mandatory plain packaging comes into force in Australia next year, and there is already talk of the UK adopting similar rules. The UK’s nanny-in-chief, Andrew Lansley, is said to be keen on the idea.

Courtesy of the Cato Institute's Juan Carlos Hidalgo:

In his speech at the Liberal Democrat Party conference yesterday, energy secretary Chris Huhne declared: “we need no Tea Party tendency in Britain”. My view is completely different – I would argue that a Tea Party tendency is precisely what Britain needs. But let’s be clear about terms. As Daniel Hannan wrote on his blog yesterday:

I’ve been waiting to use that headline for a while, and the news that Standard & Poor’s has downgraded Italy’s credit rating to A is too good an opportunity to miss. And just in case you were thinking that A still sounds pretty good, remember that A comes after AAA, AA+, AA, AA- and A+.